


Chasing Constellations

by 264feet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), F/F, Genderfluid Character, Getting Together, Internalized Transphobia, Other, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 16:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16622357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/264feet/pseuds/264feet
Summary: Years after graduating from Hope's Peak, Aoi invites Touko to a reunion. There, Touko meets an unfamiliar blonde woman who goes by Polaris.





	Chasing Constellations

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Byakuya Wears Lingerie Sometimes (And That’s Okay)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14545296) by [zenonaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenonaa/pseuds/zenonaa). 



Escape always awaits within the pages of a book. The people there are star-crossed lovers and princesses and wizards and don't scream at each other in the kitchen. The only problem is that it's difficult for the girl to read when locked inside the dark closet.

When the girl is finally released after three days, one of her mothers notices the pile of dog-eared paperbacks and dreams of retirement on an author's royalties. No longer is the girl locked in the closet. The girl's father calls her a "promising young man." She wonders if she ever was released at all.

* * *

Once the fight ends, the girl tiptoes through broken glass and toppled furniture toward one mother's bedroom. It was left unlocked as everyone stormed out of the house. Triggering the fight was excruciating, but it will be worth it.

She takes off her gakuran and slips on an old skirt-- a miniskirt, but it reaches her childish body's shins. For a top, a conservative beige blouse. Red heels complete the look. She sets them up in front of the full-length mirror aware that she couldn't walk in them.

"Promising young woman," she says. 'Young' is true. The other words aren't.

* * *

He ruins her love letter twice. First by rejecting it, then by getting his blood on it.

She used the scissors to cut the paper into a heart. Now they puncture the hands that she wished to hold. He's more beautiful in death than life. No fists rise up to stop her from kissing his lips; all those miserable words he said have drained from his veins.

A second, then a third. A droplet splashes the newspaper headline: a tear rather than blood. The reporter nicknamed her 'Genocider Syo'. Not even in her trauma can she escape a man's name.

* * *

The girl chooses 'Touko' because she needs something to put on her books. They sell. She writes more. A talent scout wants to meet 'Touko'. Never having gotten a haircut, she ties it into long braids. The disappointment on his face is palpable. It always is.

Girls ask her name and she scowls. Boys snicker when she passes and she bites back tears. Her fingers are itching for the loops of scissors when she arrives at class. It's time for introductions and her mind is a blizzard.

One student rises. "I am Byakuya Togami." And he sits.

The blizzard clears.

* * *

Touko. 'Winter child.' Just like the winter: forlorn, feculent, forsaken. Her heart a tundra; the soil rejected being tilled long ago.

When she's near him, flowers bloom.

He tells her things she knows: she's filthy, miserable, worthless. Her love battles her hatred, a heatwave to a snowstorm. She wants to kiss him and to kill him; maybe not in that order. The line separating her from Syo is as unpredictable as a sneeze.

If she gets closer, she'll end him. She'll end herself. Romeo and Juliet. She spares his life, maintains a distance until graduation day.

He doesn't say goodbye.

* * *

 

Higher education was a waste of her time. By 18, her monthly royalties were others' annual salaries. Touko already knew everything about writing that she needed to know. What else was there to go to college for? Friends? What a joke. After discharged from Hope's Peak, she pays in full for a small house. She can afford it; her parents no longer speak to her, so she doesn't have to worry about paying their retirement. She wonders if they'll even live that long.

In order to avoid further mockery, she has groceries delivered and left on the doorstep in neat packages. Forcing an animal to join her cage would be cruelty, so she never gets a pet, but sometimes she avoids sweeping away the cobwebs. The spiders spin intricate webs but never become trapped in them. Touko, hammering away at her typewriter, can't say the same.

Her phone rings and she groans. The caller ID returns a number that isn't her agent. A prank call? She answers, gives a greeting through clenched teeth. A chipper voice sings an extended "hey Fukawa-chaaaaaaaaaan!" She would recognize Aoi's hideous voice anywhere. She's equally perplexed by what her old classmate could want and by how she called despite having had her number blocked.

Aoi describes some kind of class reunion party. She could have described noise torture followed by waterboarding and Touko would be more likely to go. She hangs up and blocks the new number. Aoi calls again from ten different numbers until Touko picks up and hisses.

"Geez! I was just trying to help you participate in something fun! None of us have seen you since high school!" Aoi huffs. "And we managed to drag Togami along for it, too!"

Silence. "When is this reunion?"

Touko regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth. She can physically hear Aoi's shit-eating grin. "I thought you didn't want to go, Fukawa-chan."

"When is the reunion!?"

"In a week. You're, uh, one of the last on our list to call." Which translates to, 'we didn't want you to come but some Good Samaritan like Makoto forced us to call you'. "It's not an official school event, so we're going to meet in a popular bar in Shimbashi."

Touko scrambles for a pen as Aoi gives the exact time of the meetup and the bar's name and address. Neither of them speak for a moment and Touko realizes that Aoi is expecting her RSVP. "F-fine. I'll be there."

"Yay! Can't wait to see you there, Touko-chan!"

Without another word, Touko ends the phone call and slumps at her writing desk. She's just exhausted all her social energy for the next week and now she's promised to go to a bar.  ** _A bar_**. Sweaty drunks, blaring televisions, giggling bimbos.

Byakuya.

All her life, she's looked up to a starless sky. No hope, no direction. Now a guiding light pierces through the darkness. She slips out of her grungy old outfit and gets in the shower.

* * *

Touko's vocabulary spans millions of words and the only one in her head right now is hate. She's not sure who she hates more: the drunken men who keep hitting on her or the men who don't.

She doesn't know much about drinks, so Aoi orders something for her which tastes like fruit. The alcoholic taste is an afterthought, a sweet sensation followed by a lingering pungency. It perfectly describes her tailing Aoi awkwardly about the party.

At some point, Aoi's girlfriend Sakura scares off a man who makes a pass at Aoi. Afterward, the Ogre insists on watching Aoi like a guard dog. Touko isn't about to get caught in the crossfire between a drunk and the neanderthal, so she picks a corner and sticks to it.

Her head swims from the alcohol. It dulls the sound in her ears and the worry in her head. So far, there's been no sight of Byakuya. She would go personally find Aoi and take her apart with her bare hands if it weren't for the Ogre.

As she's making a third (or fourth? or fifth?) pass at the bar, she bumps into some blonde hussy. Touko never had many 'friends', per se, but she was aware of all her classmates so she could best avoid them. This skinny woman must be a misplaced barmaid. "Watch it, slut," she hisses.

The woman raises her eyebrows as if she doesn't speak Japanese. Touko thought her tone would get the message across. Notably, the woman does not  _move out of the way._

"Did you fucking hear what I fucking said?" Touko says. Her stutter is gone. Her anxiety is gone. It feels as if she broke free of her shackles and now she's flying on profane wings into a sky of fuckery. "I'm not just going to get pushed around anymore! Either move out of the way or I'm going to make you move!"

It finally gets through to the woman. She blinks as if awaking from a daydream and steps to the side. Touko slams her empty glass down on the bar and a refill soon makes its way into her hand. She downs it like a weary fisherman might chug a frothy ale. Her head is a buoy on a stormy sea.

So the night was a bust. Aoi had lied to her because she pitied her. People give her polite acknowledgements, if even that much. It's time to cut her losses and skulk home. She slams down a large bill on the counter- "keep the damn change"- and stumbles free into the night. The sidewalk is difficult to walk on when it spins like a cement mixer, the way it currently is, but she's pretty sure she can get home. Probably. Maybe. She stops and releases the contents of her stomach into a bush.

Maybe.

The night closes in on her. Leering eyes, cold streets. Little does Touko know that a certain blonde woman followed behind her out of the bar.

* * *

Two things strike her when she wakes up: a splitting headache and the realization that someone is standing over her. Something (or someone) in her reacts and she swings out her arm-- or she would, if it weren't made of lead.

"Calm yourself," the woman above her says. She holds up Touko's key. "You let me in last night. I walked you home because you got too drunk at the bar."

The bar. Touko can't place the woman until her glasses are placed on her nose. Then the blond hussy materializes in front of her. She doesn't remember the exact words she said, but rather the vicious shape of them. Her cheeks flush. "Wh-why are you still here?"

The woman rolls her eyes as if bored of it all. "'Last night' is a relative term. It's been about four hours."

She explains that Touko could barely walk and tried to walk through a bad part of town. The woman used her height to scare off some seedy men. She would have left, but Touko made it clear she was violently ill and lived alone.

"You... took care... of me?" Touko whispers.

Another eye-roll. "You were a danger to yourself and others. You couldn't be left alone."

The kettle whistles and the woman rises to her full intimidating height, walking off. Touko lays back at her spot on the couch. She doesn't even know this woman's name. She returns with tea and Touko expresses her gratitude and embarrassment with a hissed, "who are you?!"

"You don't recognize me?" She sounds annoyed, but underneath it all... flattered?

"W-why would I?"

"Use your brain for once," she sneers, turning her head sharply to the side.

Then it clicks.

Immediately she sits up straight, smoothes out her hair, brushes crumbs off her clothing. "By-byakuya... -sama...?"

"I almost preferred 'slut'."

Touko isn't sure if she's still drunk. It takes several minutes and just as many cups of tea, but 'Byakuya' explains she's genderfluid. Some days, she feels more like a woman and goes by 'Polaris'. She didn't realize until after graduating. 

She chooses her next words carefully. "I... understand." For once, she looks Polaris in the eye. "What it feels like... to not be yourself. I just wish... w-we hadn't met like this."

"Hmph. You were positively crude and brash."

"I--"

A rare smile crosses Polaris's face. "I've never seen that side of you. The Fukawa I  saw followed me like a lost puppy dog."

A lot is said, but no words are spoken. "... The Byakuya I saw would have let me rot on the pavement outside the bar."

"I would be struck with a littering fine."  

She snorts. "Only if I'm in your possession."

With the teapot empty and the headache passed, Polaris stands. "You are in nobody's possession but your own, Touko Fukawa. Don't ever forget that." There's a hint of envy to her words.

"Will I see you again?" Touko asks, before Polaris leaves.

"Perhaps if we both make bad decisions again."

* * *

She does see Byakuya again: on televisions, in newspapers. Never Polaris. But sometimes Byakuya shifts uncomfortably in his suit more than normal.

As an adult, he must produce an heir. The reporters don't understand the selection process, but they do know women across the world are mailing egg cell samples to Byakuya. Touko glances at her estrogen pills and scowls.

Snowflakes tap against her only window. They remind her of spectral fingers tapping her fishbowl from the outside. Somewhere, a phantom looks in and the wind howls in laughter. She attempts to drown it out with tapping of her own, but her typewriter is broken. It won't produce anything except for drivel about Polaris.

It takes three days to revise the letter. She slashes it with red pen as if drawing blood, outlines and drafts and redrafts, and finally creates a one-paragraph invitation to meet again at a cafe. No alcohol. It's out of the city; no risk. Sending it fills her with the same feeling as tossing it into a fireplace and watching the words vanish on the blackening paper.

A reply arrives within two days. Within a week, she sits across from Polaris, sipping coffee.

They chat for a short time. It's strange to speak and be listened to. With her parents, their eyes glazed over as soon as she opened her mouth. Polaris nods attentively when listening, asks questions, sometimes even smiles or laughs. A draft keeps blowing in as customers enter the cafe but Touko doesn't feel the slightest bit cold.

The TV on the wall is set to a fluff morning news station, something which doesn't cover anything serious. A chipper reporter talks about the Togami family as if they were royalty in a castle of gold, but also as if they were playthings-- exotic pets to watch and prod.

"I don't want them," Polaris says, shaking Touko from her thoughts. "The egg samples are sent right back. It's borderline sexual harassment."  

"Don't you have to create an heir as a Togami?"

"A Togami doesn't 'have' to do anything," she sneers. "And right now, I am Polaris P Polanski."

Touko frowns at her coffee. "If.. if you could have kids on your own terms... w-with the right woman... would you?"

"Why would I burden a child with a name like Togami?"

Her eyebrows raise. The Togami name was a throne, but one with restraints; Polaris, however, is unbound. She doesn't explain, but the 'sending egg samples' says it all. To the Togami family, women are decorations, investments. Not leaders.

Finding a moment of bravery, Touko reaches across the table and rests her hand atop Polaris's. "I-if you could ever just... escape from it all, somehow... would you?"

Polaris turns her attention away from the TV, glances at a Santa decoration in a store window. "If you could wear a red costume and fly on a magic reindeer-led bobsled, would you?"

Her eyes turn to Touko; strong as ever, but yet hollow. "It's just as impossible."

* * *

Polaris steals moments; Syo steals days. Sometimes, Touko can feel Syo coming; see the storm clouds gathering on the white horizon to bury her in white. It happens when she lies awake at night and thinks of how she doesn't deserve Polaris. It happens when she looks in the mirror and sees just a  _thing._  Then she wakes up with another scar and none of it matters.

She checks the television. December 24th. It's been a week. Syo was kind enough to drop her off in time for the holidays alone.

(Alone a welcome change from suffocating silence, unfinished plates, slamming doors--)

Touko crawls over scissors and dirty plates to her writing desk. Syo will wreck anything else, but shares Touko's strong feelings toward her writing area. Piles of unfinished letters sit nearby, addressed to Polaris. Their trysts have become more and more scarce; escapes for the both of them when their crushing reality becomes too much. Neither of them seems sure what this is, but last time, Polaris's fingers intertwined with Touko's. They haven't met in weeks now, and--

'Share feelings'. Polaris. _Byakuya._

As much as she normally tries to distance herself from her crimes, now she cranks up the TV's volume. Syo covered her tracks. It's only a missing persons report: Ryotaro Yamamoto, Ken Tanaka, Byakuya Togami. Police are searching the city and oh my god no no no.

She forgets a coat but manages a scarf before running into the snow. She has no idea where she's going and doesn't care. The TV in the sketchy pawn shop says that they're fearing these incidents may be connected. The police alert sent to her phone says that Yamamoto's body was found with the word 'BLOODLUST'. The gossiping girls sitting near a Christmas tree say a witness saw Syo this time: a pervert wearing women's clothing.

Her legs are weak from lack of exercise, or from Syo's overexertion, or from the death she drags like a ball and chain. The stars hang overhead like fairy lights as families gather around dinners and drinks. She's reaches a wide-open city park but it feels like walls are closing in on her, like she was tossed in the closet again and she no longer tries to push open the door because she knows she deserves to be in there.

It was a miracle, or maybe yet another accident atop a mountain of them: she runs straight into Polaris, who stood near the park clock alone. The two fall to the ground, Touko atop Polaris. Despite the chill, Polaris's breath is hot; her skin is warm to the touch.

Polaris says something- if Touko knows anything about her, probably a "how dare you" or a "get off of me"- but the words don't reach her. Polaris stands and brushes snow off her blue dress. People pass by them unconcerned. There's a makeshift snow angel where they fell. Polaris frowns in concern and Touko feels the world spinning again, but not because she's drunk.

* * *

A list of things that Touko is aware of:

She is here.  
She is warm.  
She is sitting on a park bench.  
She is holding hot chocolate.  
She is sitting next to Polaris.  
She is being scolded.  
Despite above fact, Polaris has an arm around her shoulders.  
Polaris is okay.  
She is okay.  
_They_ are okay.

When she remembers her motor functions, she raises the hot chocolate to her lips. Her breathing's slowed enough for her to drink. Polaris doesn't say anything else until the cup is empty. The first question is easy enough: "do you want another?"

She nods.

* * *

The steam fogs up her glasses; obstruct the tears when it's time to explain. Polaris listens, stone-faced but not uncaring. For the first time, all of it spills out. Parents;  the "promising young man"; Syo. Not in metaphors. Not in allegories. In plain words.

When it's over, Polaris sits still. Touko expects either berating or abandonment. Instead: "I'm sorry."

Touko's words flow again:

"I'm dangerous."  
"I could hurt you."  
"You have to turn me in."

The last makes Polaris smirk. "Did I not tell you?" she says. "A Togami doesn't 'have' to do anything."

"But why?"

Polaris intertwines their fingers.

* * *

 

Touko's vocabulary spans millions of words and none are enough. There's a few: Close. Warmth. _Her._ She and Polaris stand up. Their faces an inch apart, Touko can see everything: Polaris's fear of closeness; her desire for it anyway.

Officers run past them, frantic. A smirk, but Polaris's eyes droop in frustration. They'd never recognize her. Touko wants to ask why Polaris ran, but she already knows.

In high school, Byakuya was the Sun; bright, scalding. Polaris is the North Star: a guiding light. When Polaris kisses her, Touko keeps her eyes open. She wants to see all of Polaris.

* * *

Because she was brave to cuss Polaris out.

Because she trusted Polaris with her real self.

Because she was the only one who called her Polaris.

The list of reasons  _why_ only grows whenever Touko asks. The fear lingers: "I could hurt you."

"So could I."

But they don't. A month passes without Syo. Then two. An episode lasts five minutes; Polaris stands above her with a taser. It's blunter than therapy, but Touko goes anyway-- albeit sharing limited information.

Touko falls asleep embracing Polaris and awakes holding Byakuya. There are differences, but both say good morning with a kiss.

* * *

"Aoi also thought I didn't arrive that night. Nobody recognized me," Polaris says, outside the bar. "I could have gone as Byakuya."

Touko squeezes her hand. "But you're not just Byakuya."

Their former classmates wave as they enter. People ask questions. Polaris sits at the bar and explains.

When she's done, Makoto is first to speak, always optimistic. "You're still our friend!" Others agree.

Sayaka coos over her beauty. Sakura nods. Kiyotaka even applauds. Aoi just raises a brow and says, "when's the wedding?"

Polaris begins to scoff but is interrupted by Touko-- laughing happily, without a trace of contempt.

**Author's Note:**

> This 100x5, 500x5, 100x5 format was borrowed from Byakuya Wears Lingerie Sometimes (And That's Okay) by zenonaa, which was a big inspiration to me! And that format was in turn borrowed from Einzel/Die-Einzelganger's Yowapeda Series. It's a good format and a fun challenge to write in. (The 'gazing in the mirror and referring to yourself as a young lady' part may be a not-so-subtle reference/paralell to zenonaa's fic.)
> 
> Addendum: how could I possibly forget that this was all part of a trade with ao3 user NOT_TOWA_WAKASA who drew this lovely piece of artwork? Please check it out! http://otomegrandma.tumblr.com/post/179569926430


End file.
